This tools trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the hand tools and power tools everyone owns and nobody thinks about: how old the hammer really is, where the screwdriver was invented, why a Phillips head cams out, who patented the Robertson and Torx drives, what a spirit level is filled with, and why the chainsaw was originally a surgical instrument. It also covers the brands and inventors behind the toolbox: Black & Decker's pistol-grip drill, Stihl, Vise-Grip, Leatherman, the Swiss Army knife, WD-40's real name, duct tape's wartime origin, Stanley, DeWalt, Makita, Snap-on and Craftsman. Easy questions suit workshop and pub quizzes; the harder ones on patents and dates will test tradespeople and DIY obsessives. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to a 2012 find near Kenya's Lake Turkana, the use of simple hammers dates back roughly how far?
3.3 million years
That makes the hammer possibly the oldest tool with definite evidence; hafted hammers with handles appear around 30,000 BCE.
Q 02The Oldowan stone tools are named after which site in Tanzania?
Olduvai Gorge
Louis Leakey found the first ones there in the 1930s; the oldest known examples, from Kenya, are about 2.9 million years old.
Q 03The screwdriver was probably invented in the late 15th century in which two countries?
Germany or France
Early screws held together jousting armour and matchlock guns; gunsmiths still call the tool a turnscrew.
Q 04The Phillips cross-head screw was designed to solve which annoying habit of slotted screws?
Camming out
Ironically it is now criticised for camming out at lower torque than newer cross designs like Pozidriv.
Q 05Which carmaker was an early Henry Phillips customer, using his screws on Cadillac lines in 1936?
General Motors
Phillips bought the design from inventor John P. Thompson, who had failed to interest manufacturers himself.
Q 06The square-socket Robertson screw is especially common in which country?
Canada
Henry Ford loved them for the Model T, but when Robertson refused to license the design Ford limited them to his Canadian plants.
Q 07The six-pointed star-shaped Torx drive was developed in 1967 by which company?
Camcar Textron
Its resistance to cam-out made it popular in cars and electronics; a security version has a pin in the recess.
Q 08'Allen', the everyday name for a hex key, is a registered trademark of a company from which US city?
Hartford, Connecticut
The trademark dates from around 1910; in Scandinavia the tool is often called an Unbrako key.
Q 09What do the British, Irish, Australians and New Zealanders call a wrench?
A spanner
In American English, 'spanner' means a specialised wrench with pins or tabs around its rim.
Q 10The Swedish company Bahco credits which inventor with the modern adjustable wrench, patented in 1892?
Johan Petter Johansson
Americans call it a Crescent wrench after the company that held the 1915 US patent.
Q 11According to the popular but false story, the monkey wrench was named after an inventor called what?
Charles Moncky
Historians say the name most likely began in Britain from a fancied resemblance of the jaws to a monkey's face.
Q 12The first locking pliers, sold as Vise-Grip, were invented in 1924 by William Petersen in which state?
Nebraska
They lock with a bistable cam action; in Britain the same tool is called a Mole wrench.
Q 13A precursor of the modern chainsaw was developed around 1830 by Bernhard Heine for what purpose?
Bone surgery
Two Scottish doctors had already used a chain saw for symphysiotomy in the 1780s; the first tree-felling patent came in 1905.
Q 21What does the name WD-40 stand for?
Water Displacement, 40th formula
Invented in 1953 for the Rocket Chemical Company, it was first used to protect the skin of Atlas missiles from rust; the formula was never patented.
Q 22Which company's Revolite division developed the WWII cloth tape that became duct tape?
Johnson & Johnson
It has flown on every NASA mission since Gemini and helped jury-rig the CO2 filters on Apollo 13.
Q 23In which year did James Chesterman invent the first retractable tape measure?
1821
His spring-loaded cloth strip lived in a compact case, the ancestor of the steel tape.
Q 14Which company patented an electric chainsaw for logging sites in 1926 and a petrol one in 1929?
Stihl
Andreas Stihl founded the firm to mass-produce them.
Q 15The first portable handheld electric drill was built in 1895 by the Fein brothers in which city?
Stuttgart
Bow drills, the first machine drills, go back about 10,000 years.
Q 16Which Baltimore-born company patented the pistol-grip, trigger-switch electric drill in 1917?
Black & Decker
Founded in a Baltimore machine shop in 1910, it later built cordless tools for NASA's Gemini and Apollo programmes.
Q 17Which company began making Swiss Army knives in Ibach, Switzerland, in 1891?
Victorinox
Karl Elsener's firm originally made surgical equipment; its logo is a cross in a shield, Wenger's a cross in a rounded square.
Q 18Who popularised the English term 'Swiss Army knife' in place of the German Offiziersmesser?
US soldiers after World War II
NASA has flown the knives since the late 1970s, and MoMA in New York holds one in its design collection.
Q 19What was Tim Leatherman trying to repair on a 1975 trip when he thought up his multi-tool?
A Fiat 600 car
He and his wife bought the car in Amsterdam for $300; the first Pocket Survival Tool sold in 1983.
Q 20Leatherman Tool Group is based in which US city?
Portland, Oregon
Most of its tools pack up to 21 implements around a pair of pliers.
Q 24Why is a spirit level called a 'spirit' level?
Its vial is filled with alcohol
Alcohol beats water because it won't freeze and lets the bubble move with less friction; Melchisédech Thévenot invented it before 1661.
Q 25The 'plumb' in plumb bob comes from the Latin word for which metal?
Lead
Ancient Egyptians hung plumb lines from an E-shaped tool to check that walls were vertical.
Q 26Which Greek mathematician said that with a long enough lever and a place to stand he could move the world?
Archimedes
The earliest surviving writings on levers date from the third century BC.
Q 27Conrad Bahr, who claimed to invent the first torque-limiting tool in 1918, worked for which employer?
New York City Water Department
He was fed up with inconsistently tightened flange bolts; he and George Pfefferle patented an adjustable ratcheting torque wrench in 1935.
Q 28The vernier scale on a caliper is named after a French mathematician who invented it in which year?
1631
Pierre Vernier's secondary scale lets you read between the marks of the main scale.
Q 29The Dremel rotary tool company was founded in 1932 in which Wisconsin city?
Racine
Founder Albert J. Dremel was an Austrian inventor.
Q 30Tabitha Babbitt, credited with inventing the circular saw in 1813, belonged to which religious group?
The Shakers
She got the idea watching her spinning wheel and thinking about wasteful two-man saw pits.